--- title: "From Cave Cyanobacteria to Living Building Materials: How Sequencing Supports Discovery in Extreme Environments" description: In this interview, Dr. Patrick Jung shares how his team studies cyanobacteria and other cryptogamic organisms in extreme environments. image: https://blog.genewiz.com/hubfs/Patrick-Jung_Cropped.png --- [![GENEWIZ](https://blog.genewiz.com/hubfs/GENEWIZ%20Brand%20Assets/GENEWIZ%20Logos/2025-04%20Current%20GENEWIZ%20Logos/GENEWIZ_Full-Color_Logo_PublicWeb_200x63.svg "GENEWIZ")](https://www.genewiz.com/) - Close Search [GENEWIZ Blog Homepage](https://blog.genewiz.com/) # From Cave Cyanobacteria to Living Building Materials: How Sequencing Supports Discovery in Extreme Environments [By GENEWIZ .](https://blog.genewiz.com/author/genewiz) November 04, 2026 0 Comments ![Dr. Patrick Jung](https://blog.genewiz.com/hubfs/Patrick-Jung_Cropped.png) What if some of the smallest organisms on Earth could help shape the building materials of the future? Cyanobacteria are attracting growing scientific interest for their ability to survive in extreme environments, interact with their surroundings, and contribute to processes such as mineral formation. These remarkable abilities make them promising subjects for research in biotechnology and the development of more sustainable materials. But what makes these microorganisms so fascinating is where they thrive. From deserts and oceans to caves, soils, and bare rock, cyanobacteria can survive in environments that challenge the limits of life. Often called “blue-green algae,” they are actually bacteria that produce energy through photosynthesis. Their resilience and adaptability make them valuable models for understanding how life responds to extreme conditions, and how these abilities might be harnessed for new applications. In this interview, Dr. Patrick Jung, Project Leader at the University of Applied Sciences, Kaiserslautern, shares how his team studies cyanobacteria and other cryptogamic organisms in extreme environments. He discusses why accurately identifying these organisms matters, what makes them so interesting to researchers, and how an unexpected discovery in a Spanish cave sparked research into cyanobacteria-based living building materials. His work highlights how exploring some of Earth’s most challenging environments can lead to unexpected discoveries, connecting fundamental research on the limits of life with exciting possibilities in biotechnology and materials science. **GENEWIZ:** How did an unexpected discovery in a Spanish cave lead to research into living building materials? **Dr. Patrick Jung:** The project began when a teacher in Spain, Antonio, shared remarkable images of cave cyanobacteria. He sent well-documented natural biofilm samples from a cave where cyanobacteria were growing under natural-light conditions. Some strains formed upright filaments with thick, calcified crusts that could be broken apart with tweezers. Because terrestrial cyanobacterial calcification was not well described, I contacted colleagues in civil engineering to explore whether these organisms could contribute to a living building material. We later secured a €750,000 grant and began testing cyanobacteria-based materials made with sand, gelatin, calcium carbonate, and other components. **GENEWIZ:** What makes these cyanobacteria so unusual, and why are they scientifically interesting? **Dr. Patrick Jung:** These organisms help us understand the limits and minimum requirements of life. In the Atacama Desert, one of the driest environments on Earth, cyanobacteria can live inside rocks such as gypsum, where they form green-blue layers protected from the surface. In cave systems, some cyanobacteria can use far-red light that is barely visible to humans but still supports photosynthesis. They also produce extracellular substances and create microenvironments for other organisms. This allows cyanobacteria to act as pioneers in places where little else can survive. Their ability to thrive under such challenging conditions, and, in some cases, contribute to mineral formation, makes them particularly interesting for both fundamental research and potential technological applications. **GENEWIZ:** Could these organisms really help us build more sustainable materials? What are the main challenges? **Dr. Patrick Jung:** The material is not ready to replace concrete. Its current strength is closer to mortar, and challenges remain around stability, scale-up, formulation, and finding alternative polymers to replace gelatin. Still, it may have potential for more specialized applications, such as indoor humidity regulation. We are exploring how these organisms and their properties could be used in materials, but there is still considerable work to do before we know which applications will prove practical. **GENEWIZ:** Could you briefly introduce yourself and explain how your team studies these organisms? **Dr. Patrick Jung:** I am a project leader at the University of Applied Sciences, Kaiserslautern in Germany, where I lead the XCEL - Extreme Cryptogam Ecology Lab. My team studies cryptogamic organisms such as cyanobacteria, green algae, fungi, and lichens in terrestrial environments including the Atacama Desert, cave ecosystems in northern Spain, and biological soil crusts in the Arctic and Antarctica. We combine field sampling, microscopy, cultivation, ecological experiments, and molecular analysis to understand how these organisms survive and shape extreme environments. **GENEWIZ:** How do you identify the organisms in your samples, and what role does sequencing play? **Dr. Patrick Jung:** We often isolate organisms from environmental samples and maintain them in culture collections, especially cyanobacteria from extreme terrestrial environments and symbiotic associations such as lichens. Microscopy gives us an initial view, but sequencing is essential to confirm identity and understand evolutionary relationships. For cyanobacteria, Sanger sequencing of the 16S rRNA gene and ITS regions remains an important standard for species descriptions and taxonomic identification. When deeper characterization is needed, we also use whole genome sequencing. This combination of isolation, microscopy, sequencing, phylogenetics, and bioinformatics is the keystone of my research. **GENEWIZ:** How has GENEWIZ supported your work? **Dr. Patrick Jung:** Reliable sequencing is essential across all of this work. I tested several providers before choosing GENEWIZ because the results were the best, and I have used the service since around 2019 or 2020. Reliable [Sanger sequencing](https://www.genewiz.com/en-gb/public/services/sanger-sequencing) supports the organism identification that underpins nearly every part of my research. **Biography:** Dr. Patrick Jung is a cryptogam researcher who leads the Extreme Cryptogam Ecology Lab (XCEL) at HAW Kaiserslautern, where he also served as interim professor (W2). He studies the systematics, evolution and ecology of cyanobacteria, green algae and their lichen symbioses in extreme habitats such as the Atacama Desert, the polar regions and caves. He maintains a culture collection of more than 350 strains and founded INCb, an international network on unicellular lichen cyanobionts. ### Looking for a partner for your next sequencing project? 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